Gardening

Monday, March 10, 2014

Today is my birthday and I am home on the couch, mildly hungover from overindulging at a wonderful party last night. The Fucking Cats are lying beside me, their little chins resting on my lap (a cute trick they learned at Kitty Finishing School) and their bodies are positioned in perfect alignment with a sunbeam. It's been a good day.

Earlier, while browsing at Sephora, I overheard a man with turquoise lipstick telling his co-workers by walkie talkie that the way to feel better when you're having a hard day is to lift your chin, which mysteriously rearranges your molecules and lifts your mood.

"I'm going to try that," I said, my head instinctively lifting. "The other benefit is that it eliminates my double chin."

"It works for that too," he said.

"Have you tried saying 'cheese' when you're sad? It's supposed to release serotonin and make you feel better."

"CHEEEEEESE," he said.

"CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE," I said. And then we both laughed.

"Hey, ladies," the man with turquoise lipstick said into his walkie talkie. "I want you all to say 'cheese!'"

A confused chorus of "cheese" sounded across Sephora, followed by peals of laughter.

"See?" I said. "It works." And then he gave me four lip gloss samples and disappeared like a magical turquoise lip gloss fairy.

I am amazed by how easy it is to be happy today, when there have been so many days this past year when I've had to force it or fake it or simply give in to feeling desolate and lost. Since my dad died last February, I've seen sublime happiness come in strange and unlikely forms - a man with turquoise lipstick, the pink pads of a paw, a homemade whisky sour. As Feist would say, I feel it all, I feel it all. My happiness is myopic, but I'm so grateful for it - and for you, sweet readers. I can hardly believe you are still with me, after I have given you so little in return.

These days, I'm focused on the optimistic task of planting bulbs and seeds and clearing out the balcony for spring. There is more winter ahead, but I can still pet my seedlings and dream of a summer filled with dahlias and zinnias and poppies and cosmos. After so much sadness here, I want to share whatever happiness I have with you, and hope it makes you happy, too.

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

After years of staring at the empty, abandoned tree pit in front of our apartment building, I decided to stage a guerilla gardening coup d'etat and take over the public space for myself. I had visions of lilies and dahlias and wild flowers, and was prepared to hold my ground with trowel and shovel in case anyone on Montague Street got lippy.

I imagined confrontations with smug Brooklynites ("Is that fertilizer ORGANIC? Pookie only pees on organic!") until I realized, halfway through the excavation of Brooklyn's vile exoskeleton, that the only thing that really pisses off New Yorkers is when someone upstreams their cab.

"What are you doing?" a woman stopped to ask.

"Planting some stuff," I answered, my hackles rising in defense.

"Oh," she said, considering the crust of lead and asbestos I was steadily forking into the ground. "That's so nice. Can you help me identify something in my backyard? I think it's a cactus."

After convincing her it was most certainly not a cactus, a delivery guy wheeled his bike up to the tree pit, chained it to the iron railing and took out smoke. I ran through a list of things I would say if he flicked his butt into my radioactive tree pit.

"What are you doing?" he asked, in heavily accented English. "Do you live here?"

It turned out the dude was the owner of the sushi joint five floors below me - the restaurant whose backyard I had repeatedly hosed while watering my balcony garden. Shit got hectic one day when I inadvertantly sprayed a table of German tourists and then hid before they could properly ID the perp.

"Erm...yes."

"What floor?"

"Uhh...the fifth?"

"You have the garden! The crazy garden!"

BUSTED. The day of reckoning had come, and I was trapped in the tree pit between a bike and a car, with nowhere to hide. I considered throwing my fifth floor neighbors under the bus by attributing the "crazy garden" to them, since they were stupid enough to call their dog "SO-CRATES" in homage to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure."

"Yeah, but I have the watering system under control now, so...that's good," I trailed off.

The restauranteur, who introduced himself as Nathan, was concerned about his backyard.

"I want to make it garden paradise!" he exclaimed. "How do I make flowers everywhere?"

I told him about the farmer's market, what plants he should buy, how he should plant them. Nathan listened carefully, looking nervous.

"Don't worry," I said. "It's going to be great. Give me a shout if you need help."

Two weeks later, I looked down from my balcony and saw Nathan's planters full of flowers. He'd jerry rigged an insane irrigation system which was flooding half of his newly constructed backyard, but the meditative task of deadheading had put him in a trance-like state of obliviousness.

"Lookin' good!" I called down, breaking the spell. Nathan smiled proudly and gave me the thumbs up. Elated, I responded with two thumbs up and an ill-advised fist pump. For a moment we both stood there waving dumbly - two city gardeners in our gardens of crazy.

Monday, May 13, 2013

The Medinilla magnifica started blooming last week, and every day it grows more magnifica and otherworldly. Sometimes I fear it might eat the rose geranium, which taunts it - fragrantly - from the windowsill, and which has also grown exponentially since Bonbon gave me a cutting to plant.

I haven't been around much, and my container garden has suffered. I've more of less kept up with the houseplants - the wild, ecstatic geranium, the Tiny Tim tomato plant that seeded itself in February from last year's crop (also from Bonbon), the Jasmine I bought from Trader Joe's. They sit on the sill and stare longingly at their breathern on the balcony.

But everything that lives outside is marked with neglect. This winter caused a bloodbath – several roses gave up the ghost, the Japanese maple went south, half the terracotta pots split open, and several of the IKEA wood deck tiles we put in rotted out. Considering that I've done the bare minimum of pruning, feeding, watering, planting, and tidying, the balcony looks a lot better than it should. Soon we'll have strawberries and clematis and whatever's left of the roses, with a tiny plot of arugula and lettuces (even a truant can open a seed pack, scatter, and hope for the best). I feel as though I'm being unfairly rewarded for horticultural neglect.

If I am home before dark, I climb out onto the balcony with a gin and tonic, survey what needs to be done (underplanting, staking, pinching), stare at all the bare patches of soil and the first signs of blackspot and...do absolutely nothing. Something in me just wants to sit for a while and appreciate that the sweet spontaneous earth has carried on very nicely without my poking and prodding.